Regret

I was looking through my old journal.  I wrote this a few weeks before I lost Marlee in 2007.  I clearly was having issues with morning sickness.  Shortly after I miscarried I remember looking at it and I have been kind of scared to write in my journal since.  Please don't mind me, in a weird way this is therapeutic for me.  Here is what I wrote:


Eat, double over, eat, double over...  Meet me in paradise.  I will never see you there... Every thing smells like sweet berry vomit.  I can't.  My headaches are gone.  The bad ones are gone. The spot and bugs and invisible images are gone.  The voices are gone, the sparks are gone.  The adventure and love and beauty are gone.  The trees fell down and died.  The perfect trees.  The water froze over.  The homes fell down.  The money destroyed them all.  The child eats me from the inside out.  But I need reason.  I have it but I don't.  I am not me.. I am her... I summond her and lost myself.  I invoked a spirit with the price of my life.  You cannot return a gift from paradise.  Double over.

My Life and Death Part II -"...for in that sleep of death what dreams may come."

I remember waiting to go into the OR for my DNC.  I remember the nurse telling me I would be out soon.  I remember seeing the nurse and doctors pushing me into the room lifting me off the bed and laying me on the cold operating table.  I thought I was screaming for them to stop.  I thought I was crying.  Thinking back I couldn't have been because even if I was concious, I couldn't breath enough to yell out or cry.  After that I was out.

When I woke up what happened over the next couple of days was the closest thing to a living hell  and heaven I have experienced.  I am not a religious person.  I cannot really put the events into chronological order because time lost all meaning.  I was in a waking dream. Eternity was now and everywhere.  There was no past and no future.  There is peace in that.

I remember first thinking where is my baby and where am I, in that order.  Then I remember taking a breath and nothing happening.  Nothing at all.  People in uniforms quickly reconnected several tubes.  Breath came back, but it was painful. I noticed then that my face was full of tubes to breath for me.  I had to think of every breath.  Every breath brought pain.  My OBGYN came in and told me my heart had stopped and I had died in the OR.  He also told me how riddled with MRSA my body was.  It was in my blood, my lungs, my heart, my brain, my spine and anywhere else that mattered.  During my week in the ICU I would hear nurses outside my room discussing my imminent death between shifts.

I could not cry or mourn my daughter's death, because if I did I would stop breathing.  My days were spent counting breaths and having tests done.  The tests were bad.  The worst is what I believe is called an air gas test?  I don't really know what it is for, but they took a needle and put it in my wrist, and it felt like they were scraping it around in my veins.  I am cringing remembering it.  When ever I was able to sleep I would always be woken up by x-ray technician lifting my onto a cold metal slab.  Th IVs were horrible as well.  I woke up one morning with three in one arm and two in the other.  The worst IVs were those in the hands and wrists.  The worst medicine was the potassium.  They had it pumping into my arm through an IV, it burned.

Every thought that made my cry I had to box up in my mind.  Put it in a box and concentrate on breathing, look at the monitor, look at the numbers, listen to the beeps, wiggle my toes, breath, repeat.   Talk to the nurse, does she have a family, whats her name, why is she here.  Listen to the girl dieing in the next room, she had cancer, she sounded young, a girl, maybe a teen, maybe she doesn't drive yet, maybe she never made love, maybe she has a dog, maybe the dog will miss her... don't cry, put that in a box.

I saw my Grandma Roth.  She was in a blue light, it was not blue, it was another color that is not real but it was her aura.  She was with another woman, a tall strong woman I did not know, she held a blanket.  They wrapped Marlee Kay in the blanket and loved her and loved me.  A tall man in a long coat came.  I did not say goodbye because there was no reason too, Marlee Kay is with me even now in my heart.  Why say goodbye if she is always with you?  I left the light.  The man took me through a series of crumbling structures when we emerged from the final structure there was a tree.  We seemed to be standing in front of one of my childhood homes.  The tree was huge.  We watched a branch crack, pop and fall from the tree and land in its twisted roots.  It twisted into the roots and became a part of them, supporting the life of the tree.  Death was beautiful.

When I woke up I felt sad, peace, trapped, found and then lost again.  I craved death.  I wanted to be a part of the roots tangled with Marlee for eternity.  Loving.  Life changed.  Everything became abstract except the energy of life and the universe.  To die would to be pure again, to be away from what isn't real.  Time, Buildings, Money, Work, School, Food, Clothes, Religion, Politics, Vacation, Location.  Everything lost all meaning for me.  None of it was real.  I am still coping excepting the reality of some of these things, these unnecessary inventions of mankind.  Get over it people!!!!  Love you family!!!  The End!  That is it, there is no more.  You are important in NO other way, but in loving your family(which doesn't mean blood relations) you are the most important person.  You connect with every life you encounter.  Every connection will come back to you on you death bed.  When they say on your death bed life flashes before your eyes, they do not mean the vacation you took to Disney when you were 7.  Life is the connections you make and the love you disperse, so be wise.

John came in, he brought a CD player from Aunt Laurie's house.  It had a Beatles CD in it.  I listened to it.  The nurse liked the Beatles, so she let John stay in the ICU past visiting hours.  He wanted to hug me, but I had to many tubes.  I cannot even imagine his side to this story.  He has told me bits and pieces.  Like I said in my last post.  What happened to us is very difficult to revisit in conversation.

I wanted death, all I had to do was stop trying and I could die.  Stop counting the breaths.  I learned another important lesson in the ICU, instinct.  My instinct trumps my wish to die.  I craved death so bad it was one thing that at one point I could not box in and I started crying, next thing I knew every doctor on the floor was in my room because all of my monitors went off.  Every time I woke up from sleep I was disappointed.  I wanted to return to no pain, peace, no time and Marlee.  I knew John would be okay, I knew it would work out for him eventually if I was gone.  He would mourn, but life goes on.  Life went on for me as well.

I became stronger,  I could stop counting, I went "home"

Why I am not a teacher

I went to grad school for secondary social studies education.  I dipped my toe in the teaching ocean for about half a second and then ran for my life.  Everyone always asks me "why don't you just teach?"  They always reminded me of the short days, the summers off and the holidays.  I do not want to teach!  Teaching is bad.... I mean really bad!  Maybe some people out there like it, more power to them, but it is not for me.  Let me explain to you all my experience "teaching" the youth of this country.

First I think I should explain my motivation.  I want to say that I did not initially go to school to teach.  I earned my B.A. in History, concentrating in classical and ancient history.  When I finished my undergrad degree I knew I wanted to continue my education but I was not sure what I wanted to do.  I debated going all the way with history and eventually becoming a professor, but that would be a lot of time and money committed to a career that I was not positive I wanted.  I thought teaching might allow me to experiment with grad school and writing subject curriculum, public speaking and so on....  All things I figured would help me in the future if I did eventually decide to become a professor.

I love history.  I love talking about history.  I love learning about how cultures evolve and interact over space and time and discussing new ideas and theories about how past events played out and how they effect us today.   I got into teaching because I like standing in front of a group of people and running my mouth about what I love.  I did not get into teaching because I like kids (doesn't mean I don't like them, it just wasn't my reason).

I will try to keep this as short as I can.  My love of history ruined my ability to teach high school.  Social Studies in New York State (and I would imagine in the rest of the states) is a joke.  Like other subjects the curriculum is based exclusively off of the Regents exam.  So as a teacher it is your job to teach the students the skills to preform well on the Regents exam (this will lead to potential funding for the school district).  The Regents exam consists mainly of multiple choice questions and a short essay on a ridiculous topic.  The "facts" that are learned are extremely "american bias"  they show very little if any perspective of any other cultures.  There is very little history taught of any other region of the world.  By far the most frustrating aspect of American High School Social Studies is the complete and utter exclusion of geography!  I once asked a student to point to Japan on a world map.  They responded "that is the capitol of China, right?" and then pointed to Europe.

I could no longer participate in the Americanized version of reality that schools cram into students.  American perspective certainly has its place, but, you can not reflect without a mirror.  We need to teach our students that other, foreign, different perspectives are not bad, but help us learn more about ourselves and our place in this world.  I certainly could not compromise myself and these children.  It was a nightmare.

Instead of hoping to have an accident on the way to work everyday so I could go to the hospital instead of to the classroom, I decided to change my career path.  That is why I do not teach!